Feds: Princeton didn’t discriminate against Asian applicants

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has cleared Princeton University of allegations that it discriminates against Asian and Asian-American applicants in admissions.

Princeton, which announced the civil-rights office’s findings on Wednesday, had come under the scrutiny of the federal civil-rights office as a result of separate discrimination complaints filed by rejected applicants with Asian backgrounds, in 2006 and 2011. The rejected applicants, who asked the federal government to investigate Princeton after being denied admission, argued in their complaints that the university had treated them differently because of their racial and ethnic backgrounds. Supreme Court has weighed the constitutionality of race-conscious admissions policies, and Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have been accused of anti-Asian bias in lawsuits filed last year in federal court. The University sometimes considers race and national origin as factors in admissions, but OCR found no evidence that the school does so in a discriminatory manner.